227 – ʿUmar ibn Abī al-Ḥārith al-Hamdānī related to me; he said: Maḥbūb ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Numayrī narrated to us; he said: ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Abī al-Mughīra al-Qurashī narrated to us; he said: al-Faḍl ibn ʿĪsā wrote to me:

“To proceed: the abode in which we have awakened is an abode ringed by tribulation, branded with extinction; everything in it is heading toward disappearance and depletion. While its people may bask in ease and delight, it suddenly casts them into hardship and rough terrain. Its states are ever-shifting, its tiers constantly turning: they are struck by its calamities and tested by its comforts. Life in it is censured, and the happiness it offers never lasts. How could a life endure when its changes are afflictions and its recurring turns are disasters—when tragedies wring the hearts within it and death drives on its inhabitants? They are nothing there but exposed targets, with doom looming over them, hurling at them its arrows and covering them with its deadly blows. There is no avoiding arrival at its watering-places, and witnessing its horrors is a decree that has already issued from Allah in His judgment and which He has resolved to carry out; from it there is no turning aside and no escape.

So how wretched is a dwelling whose shade contracts and whose inhabitants fade away! Its people are merely travellers who have halted for a moment, ⦗113⦘ a caravan poised to depart. It is as though their situation has already been reversed and the cry to break camp has risen; the place has become a wasteland—its pillars collapsed, its landmarks effaced. They have exchanged it for the lonely graves that have made desolation their home and whose foundations are laid in dust: the time to alight there is near, yet whoever dwells there will be a stranger among uncanny neighbours, each lodging far apart. They find no solace in habitation, keep none of the bonds of brothers, and pay no visits as neighbours do. Though their dwellings are adjacent, they are too preoccupied to connect; never have I seen neighbours so close yet so devoid of visits, despite the nearness of their homes and the proximity of their quarters. And how could it be otherwise, when decay has ground them beneath its weight, and rocks and soil have consumed them? After life they have become scattered remains: loved ones were bereaved of them, they were taken as a pledge, and there is for them no return.

It is as though we too have already reached what they have reached: we shall likewise be held in that bed, enclosed in that repository, seized by overpowering force and constriction, and no anxious caution will prove of any avail. And peace.”

He said: I asked him, “What did you write back to him?” He replied, “I was unable to compose an answer.”